Farming Heritage

PIP COURTNEY, PRESENTER: There aren't too many businesses in Australia that have been operating continuously for a century, and you'd think it's impossible for an Australian enterprise to trace its origins back more than 200 years. Well, a farm established near Hobart can do just that. Somerville has been farmed continuously by seven generations of the same family since 1808, as Fiona Breen discovered.

FIONA BREEN, REPORTER: From this high point on the Summerville property, just 29 kilometres north of Hobart, the landscape looks unusually lush and green. Record rainfall has fed the dams to overflowing. The pivot irrigators have hardly been used.

SON: It's not very often we get to look at, in November, the big dam full.

JIM THOMPSON: Last time I saw this much water is 1960 floods and, well, there was more water then, but it was only about five-and-a-half inches. This country won't take a lot of water in one hit.

FIONA BREEN: Jim Thompson and his sons Walter and Peter haven't seen it so green for years. In the past decade, they've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on irrigation, fool-proofing the farm against drought and allowing the family to switch to more of a mix of crops and livestock. It's kept the sixth and seventh generation Summerville farmers on the land and continued a family tradition spanning more than 200 years.

JIM THOMPSON: We farmed in the area since 1808 and there's been no break in the family farming. The - there's been a change of land. Quite a bit of the land's been sold off and quite an amount has been brought in as well. But we've still retained the family farm.

FIONA BREEN: The family only learnt of their farm's long history after patriarch Jim Thompson retired and started researching the family tree. A stash of old photographs long forgotten was discovered in a relative's garage. They revealed a century of family history. A trail of documents in local government and library archives revealed another century.

It's pretty amazing, isn't it?

JIM THOMPSON: Well, yes. When - I got a bit of a shock when I found out, to be quite honest. It is amazing, I suppose. We have a generation eight looking at us. Yeah, pretty well all girls, but that hasn't stopped - two of the generations to get to this stage have come through the girls.

FIONA BREEN: The farm has been operated continuously by direct descendants of a First Fleet marine, Daniel Stanfield. He started with 11 hectares. Each generation since has managed to increase the size of the property. It hasn't been easy, though. Drought nearly pushed a couple of generations to the edge, as did some premature deaths and expensive ancestral buyouts. But somehow the family was always able to hold on to the business.

Jim Thompson has his own theories about his relatives' tenacity.

How do you think all the previous generations kept going all through that time?

JIM THOMPSON: They haven't blown it at the pub or the race track or anything. I think they've been very sound, hardworking people and very smart people, most of the time, anyway. And I'm pretty proud of them.

FIONA BREEN: The family has now been rewarded for its longevity in business and officially declared Australia's oldest continuous family business.

Recent investigations by the organisation Family Business Australia found Summerville was 18 years older than the previous titleholder, a Perth merchant business, Lionel Samson & Sons, which was established in 1829. Family Business Australia found six Tasmanian farms that predated the Perth operation.

JIM THOMPSON: I haven't been a person to think back. It's always looking forward. But - yeah, I'm pretty grateful and I'm absolutely amazed what they did in those early years because we reckon it's tough now; I don't know how they managed some of those drought years, how they actually got through.

FIONA BREEN: There are hints of the past around the property. A few pieces of old equipment, the sandstone barn which was an old flour mill and the homestead which dates back to the 1830s. But Jim Thompson knew little of his family history. His parents never talked about their ancestors and their early deaths meant that Jim Thompson never really got a chance to ask.

JIM THOMPSON: I was alerted by a historian only a few years ago doing a history of Brighton and she told me that - she said, "What are you doing next year?" And we said, "Why?" And she said, "Well you've been farming 200 years in the district." And I realised that we'd been there a long while, but I didn't have much idea. I think I was only 16 when my father died and my mother had a stroke soon after. But she never spoke of the past history and there had been some sadness there and also there was a convict in the - and 50 years ago, you didn't sort of mention you had a convict in the family.

FIONA BREEN: At its peak, the Summerville farm topped nearly 1,500 hectares. Old photographs taken in the early part of the 20th Century show plenty of activity. The farm ran sheep and cattle for meat and there was also a small dairy. It was also producing vast amounts of wheat and chaff and once supplied feed for most of the horses of Hobart.

JIM THOMPSON: I think they had some magnificent crops. And I think they must have been pretty good at their job. Someone was - I saying that they fed the horses of Hobart, but another historian was reminding me the other day they also had to feed the dairy farms in round Hobart, you know, close to Hobart. They all relied on fodder coming from out these areas. About 1870 the railways opened up and the farm was right on the edge of Brighton Junction railway station so it had pretty good access to get the fodder directly into Hobart. I would think they'd do very well.

FIONA BREEN: In the 21st Century, the farm landscape looks a little different. Fed by dams and reused water from the local sewerage treatment plant, the family's been able to diversify more, and today, it's a patchwork equipment of modern and traditional crops.

They also have beef cattle - about 1,000 crossbred ewes for lamb and about 3,000 merinos producing a fine wool.

Of the five arms of the business, the merinos are the most stable. Their high quality fleeces fetch a good price. Each year the flock produce about 100 bales of 18 micron wool, much of which ends up as designer clothes.

The most lucrative but fickle modern crop is poppies, grown for their opiate alkaloid content which is used in pain medication like codeine and morphine.

The Thompson's produce one of the better poppy crops in the state, with global pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline rating them one of southern Tasmania's top poppy growers.

JIM THOMPSON: I think they'd be quite amazed at what we're growing. They wouldn't know poppies for a start. But we're growing beans and peas and all sorts of crops, small seeds. They were purely just wheat, oats and livestock, and, I mean, we haven't really changed - and wool - we haven't really changed all that much. But that - having said that, that gives me the hope for generation eight that they didn't know what we'd be growing and I don't know what they'll be growing. So perhaps we'll still be going.

FIONA BREEN: It could be grapes or perhaps cherry orchards. Irrigation has seen vineyards and fruit trees planted nearby. Either way, there's not much room for expansion of the existing farm. The suburbs of Hobart have been creeping into the landscape for the past decade. Where once the Summerville farm had one or two neighbours, now there's 50 or more.

JIM THOMPSON: We started off in a purely rural municipality - farms - all farms around us, but they just gradually left and took the opportunity to sell their land at quite good prices and move out.

FIONA BREEN: Walter and Peter Thompson intend to hold on for at least another 20 years. After that, they're not sure.

The brothers have five children between them and some nieces and nephews, making up the eighth generation of this farming family.

If patriarch Jim Thompson has anything to do with it, Summerville will stay in the family for another few generations at least.

JIM THOMPSON: Don't think I would be around for generation eight, but it'd be nice to think it came, kept going.